Jukebox Inspirational Quotes

If I look closely, I bet I could see my own past, lying on the floor somewhere between the ancient jukebox and the pool table.

With a remarkable journey from a 79-year-old Italian immigrant to a successful real estate investor and hotel operator, Paul Boschetti's life is an inspiration. He enjoys collecting vintage cars and jukeboxes, cheering for the San Francisco Warriors, and traveling to beautiful destinations like Mexico, Hawaii, Germany, France, and England.

Mine is just one such story; every day, people around the world are making creative breakthroughs that change the way we live, listen, and learn. And although it may seem like these breakthroughs come about spontaneously, born from inspired bursts of clarity, the reality is that most of them make their way to the surface only after a series of disappointments, false starts, and spectacular failures. If you can find a way to smile through the letdowns, learn from the disasters, and—above all—stay loyal to the people you care about, you’ll discover that you’re unstoppable. Life is messy, and we’re all just a bunch of creeps and weirdos. And that’s okay. We are perfect, just the way we are. Now go forth and make art.

To get back into the creative groove, I need to be relaxed enough to allow my mind to drift, with no thought of deadlines or other obligations. Of course, creativity usually needs something else, too, to flourish, and that something is what I call creative hunger. For me, it’s the name for what happens when creativity is mixed with profound inspiration. If you aren’t filled with creative hunger, then it’s all too easy to put things off, rationalize that a project is too difficult to tackle, or decide that you would be just as content watching TV instead. Ambitious young people generally start off with a great deal of creative hunger, but as they age and experience tastes of success here and there, the drive has a way of dissipating. After you’ve got a hit under your belt, it’s tempting to simply keep enjoying the fruits of the labor you’ve already harvested. If you want to stay at the top of your game, though, it’s imperative that you stay hungry.

knowing that I wanted to be a piano player, and knowing that practicing, of course, was just something piano players did, I turned my daily practice into a habit. Now, habits get a bad rap; we tend to think of things like biting our nails or smoking when we talk about them. But really, a habit is defined as “a settled or regular tendency or practice, especially one that is hard to give up.” Tooth brushing is a habit (for most of us). So is showing up to work on time. Those are some good habits. Habits can be good; say it with me. Once you’ve trained your brain to view practicing as a habit, the next step is finding the motivation to adopt that habit. The key to motivation, I’ve learned, is coupling your profound inspiration to a strong belief in yourself, and that’s not something even the best teacher is able to instill. It has to come from within. Building a strong core identity to drive your motivation requires first believing that you’ll eventually master the skill you’ve set out to learn—no matter how farfetched that might initially seem to yourself and others. Having the correct image of yourself is really key here; you have to think of yourself as the thing you want to be long before other people think of you as that. You may only have taken one trumpet lesson and sound horrible, but you still must think of yourself as a trumpet player in order for the habit to stick. You are whatever you do repeatedly. Practicing became such a constant in my day—and in such a natural, unforced way—that I hardly had to think about it. It had become, in other words, a habit.

I want to take a second here to talk about my decision to go to school for music, since I get asked for advice on this pretty often. If you’re a young musician (or dancer, or musical theatre actor, or any type of creative performer for that matter) and you’ve progressed in your abilities to the point that a career in the arts seems like a viable path forward, it’s only logical that you’ll find yourself considering a formal continuation of your music studies post–high school. Whether you go the route of the conservatory or enroll in a music program within a more traditional college, you’ll receive training from professional musicians, perform in ensembles alongside other talented students, and have access to state-of-the-art facilities and concert halls. The icing on the cake? You’ll get to sleep in late on weekdays, take classes that appeal to you, and surround yourself with artsy, inspiring kids who share your interests and passions. If all that sounds like a dream, it’s because, in many ways, it is. But any dream has its potential downsides, and I think that it’s important that you’re aware of them, too.